MovieChat Forums > Das Leben der Anderen (2007) Discussion > Please provide nothing but historical tr...

Please provide nothing but historical truths

posted 10 years ago by Fun_Bo
6 replies | jump to latest

Regarding how govt staff that were involved in political strife were dealt with after Germany was reunited? Like in this movie, what would really happen to these characters if they'd done what they did?

1. Wiesler, will he be rehabilitated at any level no matter the new govt found out he helped or not helped a 'dangerous' person under surveillance? Will he be awarded some merit medal or what?
2. 'I can't believe people like you ruled a country!' Will the minister be accused of misconduct during his governance? If not, at least he forced himself onto another citizen, didn't he?

Thanks.

[–] justxme 10 years ago

I don't have time to do some research on the internet now but for starters I'd say this:

- Stasi officers lost their jobs completely. Officially, none of them were allowed to work for state authorities after the reunification (I don't know what happened in some dark channels but there can't have been many cases because it would have been a scandal if journalists had found out about that).

It's a romantic idea that somebody would review the files of every Stasi employee to see if there had really been "gold nuggets" like Wiesler. The sheer number of employees of ca. 90.000 in 1990 makes that impossible. They just had to find employment like anybody else. There are people who claim that Russian owned companies liked to hire former Stasi officers as managers.

- leading personell of the military and border guards were also fired because it was pretty clear they had to be not only communist party members to rise to their leading positions but they also had to have an advocate in high places. A number had probably made it there simply because they were good but I guess it was also impossible to check every person's background. As far as I know they do receive pensions (Stasi officers as well) but only low ones.

- some of the lower ranking military and border guards officers and non-commissioned officers applied and were accepted to work in the (former West) German military or federal police after a more or less thorough background check (they were the former enemy after all!). Many of them were demoted at least one rank (partly because they had risen faster in the ranks in the East German military than it was common in the West).

Many of them didn't want to work for the former class enemy though.

- in the police there was a massive cut but the rest of the officers continued to work for the newly founded federal states ("Bundesländer").

- city administration staff etc. I really don't know but I guess the staff was kept (minus the communist leaders).

As for your second question: no. The main problem was that one state, in this case the FRG, cannot simply judge something that happened in another state, the GDR, under that state's jurisdiction. One of the few things that were negotiated in court after the reunification were the shootings of fugitives at the inner German border because of an "order to fire". A few government members including Egon Krenz (who had been Honecker's deputy chairman) always denied the existence of any such order. Krenz for example was sentenced to a few years in prison but that was about it.

My personal opinion is that neither the (former West) German government nor the responsible judges wanted those trials to look like victor's justice.

[–] Fun_Bo 10 years ago

A friend from Germany I guess, that's first hand material :-)

you answered with facts, thanks a lot, I have something to add here before I seek from you the sentiment aspects of people from all walks of life after reunification.

1. 'You'll end up in some cellar, steam-opening letters until you retire', that's Grubitz's sentence of Wiesler, and clearly Wiesler remained a postman till the end of the movie, it makes sense according to your explanation. That Wiesler remained a humble postman earned my tear, and that a person with social capability/knowledge/skill/future ending up walking like a zombie in the street, when Dreyman's car passing in a distant from behind and overtaking him, a guten menschen drowned by torrents of history, that's bleak...

2. People like the minister, everyone know what a tyrant he's been, he would face lots of rejection and angry faces right? wonder what job did he get, knowing he can't work in the government.

3. I heard about the East Germany's boarder soldier shooting fleeing people, the judge remarked that he could have miss the shot and spared a man's life, is the story right here with me?

Some decades ago, my country China was darkened by unprecedented disasters - the CR - so so much wrong was done, now people feel it'll be good if somebody stands out and apologize, under this background, two movies touched me deeply, The Lives of Others, and The Reader.

Thank you, have a nice New Year's Eve.

but who knows which is which, and who is who

[–] justxme 10 years ago

A friend from Germany I guess

Indeed, I'm German but I was only 10 years old when the Berlin Wall came down.

About your first point: you have to keep in mind that this is a completely ficticious story. In the discussions about the movie it was stated clearly that there had been no real incidents like this. There is only knowledge of very few people in the Stasi who had actually changed allegiance. The first two heads of the Stasi had opposed against the head of state (1960 to 1973) Walter Ulbricht because their idea of communism conflicted with Ulbricht's, and a few Stasi officers tried to escape to the west carrying secret information with them. But somebody risking to sacrifice himself for a suspect didn't exist.

Personallly I had a little trouble believing in Wiesler's change, especially as it is portrayed so quickly. In the beginning of the movie he is a hardened operator and trainer for recruits, and suddenly he accepts to risk everything for the author he himself had seen as a suspect. I would have liked it if they had somehow shown some doubt about his work earlier in the movie, like regrets about something he had done in a former case.

As for the minister: many of the members of the government were already quite old when Germany was reunited in 1990. Erich Honecker, the head of state, was born in 1912, and he died in 1994. Erich Mielke, the head of the Stasi was born in 1907 and died in 2000. So, for many of them, finding a new job wasn't that important anymore. A younger member of the government, Günter Schabowski, who was born in 1929 and played an important role in the regime change, founded his own small newspaper in the 1990's.

I heard about the East Germany's boarder soldier shooting fleeing people, the judge remarked that he could have miss the shot and spared a man's life, is the story right here with me?

I don't know about that but I don't see why it couldn't be true. I've read that the soldiers who had actually shot refugees were mostly sentenced to imprisonment between 6 and 24 months, but on probation. I guess that is rather fair because on the one hand they had shot innocent people but on the other hand, it would have been impossible for them not to follow their orders in a system like that.

my country China was darkened by unprecedented disasters - the CR -

CR is "counter-revolutionary riot" I assume, the Tiananmen Square protests in summer of 1989?

That is an important point because the protests that finally led to the collapse of the GDR government started in September 1989, and many people were afraid the East German or Soviet government would also use violence to re-establish order. I think we have to be grateful Mikhail Gorbachev was in charge in the Kremlin back then. There is a well known speech he gave at one of the protests, saying that changes in life and in history were a normal process, and if you were willing to accept that and orientate your politics accordingly, you didn't have anything to fear.

Have a nice New Year's Eve too!

[–] Fun_Bo 10 years ago

Hey, back from holiday. Thanks to your good explanation, I get a clearer picture not affected by the thought of 'righting the wrong' and vengeance/rehabilitation with each individual. Once both sides got passed the historical bog, just walk on.

By CR, I clandestinely meant C-ultural R-evolution, if you're interested in that disaster, there are intro films like 'Farewell my concubine', 'In the heat of the sun', well movies sure can't do justice to the mind-blowing nature of the disaster, some of Mo Yan's novels are good addition.

but who knows which is which, and who is who

[–] jd-276 9 years ago

Thanks justxme, your posts are extremely informative. I have one or two questions though.

The lack of punishment meted out to former DDR officials was notable. However, I have often wondered if this was because Germany knew that reunification would be difficult and that it was better to foster a spirit of cooperation rather than punishment. After all, among the 17 million people from the East, there was likely to be a pretty large number who were unhappy about it.

Another question I have relates to the factories which were bought up by West German companies on the promise that they would be rebuilt. How many of these new factories retained their old workforces and how many shed them for newer staff? In other words, did those old factory towns suddenly become hot beds of disaffected unemployed people?

Two examples I can think of where it worked were Glashütte (watch making) and Carl Zeiss Jena (lenses). They made highly competitive products. However, I have often wondered where people from the Trabant factory ended up.

[–] Cranmer (139) 6 years ago

IIRC correctly Trabant was taken over by Volkswagen and the former factories in the DDR were re-tooled to produce VW cars.